A member of the board at MBIA Inc. is stepping down to take a position as a consultant to help the bond insurer’s senior management assess future risk, the company said today.

Debra Perry, who has served as a director of the company since 2004, was asked by the company to take the position, which will help the board’s credit-risk committee and Chairman and Chief Executive Joseph W. Brown “to refine and implement MBIA’s risk strategy for the global credit markets” as part of its 5-year restructuring plan, MBIA said.

The Armonk-based company has been hard hit by the subprime mortgage crisis.

Perry’s resignation from the board is effective today, MBIA said.

It isn’t known how much Perry will be paid in her new position. An MBIA spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for additional information.

As MBIA director, Perry earned nearly $156,000 in 2006.

Prior to joining MBIA, Perry worked for 12 years at bond-rating agency Moody’s Corp., serving as chief administrative officer and chief credit officer with responsibility over several rating groups.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. and another insurer have reached agreements with state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo regarding the their physician’s ranking programs, which includes measures for cost and quality among health providers.

In addition to UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest health insurer, Cuomo also reached an agreement with Group Health Inc. and Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, or HIP, Cuomo said today.

The pacts bring to five the number of insurers that have adopted Cuomo’s model for ranking doctors, Cuomo’s office said. It previously reached agreements with Aetna, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cigna Healthcare.

“We are witnessing the insurance market correcting itself,� Cuomo said in a statement. “The three largest insurers in the country have now all said they will apply the principles of our model for doctor rankings nationwide.�

UnitedHealth’s agreement also applies to Oxford Health Plans Inc. unit, Cuomo said.

The attorney general’s physicians ranking model was created in consultation with the American Medical

Association and the Medical Society of the State of New York, along with a host of consumer advocacy groups including Yonkers-based Consumers Union and the National Partnership for Women & Families, the statement said.

The agreements followed an investigation by Cuomo into insurers’ physician-ranking programs, which he charged simply steered patients to cheaper doctors not better ones.

National Home Health Care Corp., the Scarsdale home health-care company that is being acquired by Angelo Gordon & Co., said today the merger won’t be completed next month, as anticipated.

National Home said it agreed to extend the termination date of its merger with the Manhattan investment bank to Nov. 21 to allow additional time for state Department of Health approval.

The extension may result in an increase of 10 cents a share in its quarterly dividend payment, raising it to 17.5 cents a share, National Home said.

Shares of the provider of home health care and staffing services were higher by 18 cents in mid-afternoon trading to $12.45 a share.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, has written a letter expressing her concerns about Allstate Corp.’s ongoing move to lessen its presence in the homeowners insurance market in Westchester County and the surrounding region. “It is my understanding that your decision was based on a ‘hurricane risk management strategy’ that your company implemented last year,� Clinton wrote in the letter dated Friday. “However, it is still not clear how the perceived risk justified your sudden decision to deny coverage to your customers in New York. Moreover, other insurers in the same areas and presumably exposed to the same risks, have not taken the extreme steps you have.�

Allstate, the largest insurer in downstate New York with 26 percent of the market, announced in 2006 that it would no longer write new homeowners’ coverage in Westchester, Long Island or New York City as part of a broader move to lower its hurricane risks in coastal states. It also said last year that it would not renew some homeowners’ policies in those areas as they expire, with total attrition of policies not to exceed a state-mandated limit of 4 percent a year.

Clinton’s letter was addressed to Thomas J. Wilson, chief executive officer of Allstate.